Title

Hayley-Lever, Richard

Author

Australian Prints.

Source

[Not applicable]

Publication date

2001

Type

Biography

Language

English

Country of context

Australia

Full text

Richard Hayley-Lever

Richard Hayley-Lever was born in Australia in 1876. He studied at the Prince Alfred College, Adelaide but by the age of 18 he had decided to travel to England to pursue his art education. Little is known about his life during this period but it is believed that he studied in London and Paris.

Most of his time appears to have been spent painting at Mevàgissey in Cornwall, England and Douarnenez in France. In both of these small fishing villages Lever painted the local life in a picturesque impressionist manner. In 1911 he travelled to the USA where he became well known as a painter of ships and the sea. He also sought out isolated coastal towns, as he had in Europe and England, which gave his paintings a primitive vigour. Hayley-Lever, as he called himself in later life, produced all his etchings in the 1920s and l930s. Some are after paintings that he had produced many years earlier in England and France, while others are based on the seaside fishing village of Gloucester, Massachussetts, which after 1915 become his favourite sketching ground in the USA.

Hayley-Lever stayed in touch with many Australian artists, but his work still remains little known in his home country. He died in Mount Vernon, USA in 1958.

© Australianprints